Prayers
by samile
Summary: Through the eyes of Lewis Nixon. Friendship.


Prayers

I look at you and see the grease paint smeared across your pale face. I want to say something but what do you say to your best friend when you know this may be your last day alive? A weak smile and a clap on the shoulder will have to suffice in the place of words that just won't come. Tightening the straps on my chute once more I turn and walk away, unable to look back.  _ Please, God, let us live, _I pray which is funny considering I've never been a religious man.

I don't see you until a day or so later though time stretches like taffy and makes each passing hour seem like an eternity. I hear on the radio of the assault on the gun emplacement and know without being told it is you. I do what I can to help out this late in the chaos, commandeering two tanks and some ammunition. However, it's all over before I am needed. I spot you walking along the muddy road, head bent, papers clutched in your hands.

"Going my way?" I shout. Your head jerks up, surprised and a bit startled. Your eyes are exhausted but filled with a fire I've never seen before. You smile at me and I catch your rifle as I pull you next to me.   _Well, we made it through the jump, God, as well as the first combat we've ever seen. We're on a roll here, wanna let us live to see tomorrow?_

I about drop my field binoculars when I see you standing in the middle of the road, bullets flying all around. I open my mouth to yell at you to get down for Christ's sake but no sound comes out and then you are gone, running up the road, Easy following you. As always. Later, you are hit in the leg which some part of me finds morbidly funny. You faced a German MG without getting hit and here some stray ricochet nails you. Yeah, I have a warped sense of humor. God knows Cathy loved to remind me of the fact often enough.  _Well, this praying thing doesn't seem to be hurt anything so I might as well keep it up. You know, God, since you've let us make it this far, what's a few more days? We're getting pulled off the line soon and I'd sure as hell hate to be dead for that._

The war drags on and I've stopped counting the days we've been here and have begun keeping a tally of the months instead. However, the lines around your eyes and the weariness I spot in your step are more truthful measures of time than any calendar though it's difficult to date letters home with 'The light has gone out of Dick's eyes a bit more than the last time I saw him,' so I stick with such things as November, 1944 instead.  _Think you could hurry this war up a bit, God? I wouldn't mind seeing Christmas at home this year and I'm sure the rest of the guys feel the same. Just askin'…._

Holy hell, Bastogne is cold. It's beyond cold. However, my Yale educated brain is unable to come up with an adequate term to describe the conditions here-and no, it's not the alcohol, if you were this cold you'd have trouble thinking, too. That's why I worry about Dick. He has the weight of 2nd Battalion on his shoulders yet there's no rest for him or anyone else. Decisions that should be made by well-rested and clear headed officers are being made by a bunch of exhausted, nearly frozen ones instead.  _Is this your way of mocking me for wanting a Christmas at home, God? Hell, I'll go home whenever you see fit if you just make the goddamn cold stop._

The camp is an atrocity, pure and simple. Ha, pure and simple. Funny the terms your brain relies on to describe such horrors for there sure as hell is nothing pure and nothing simple about this place. There are so many victims and so few of us. Word trickles down this is just one of many camps and a small one at that. I feel sick to my stomach and retch behind one of the miserable huts when no one is looking. I catch a glimpse of Dick and begin to speak but he turns away too quickly.  _Dear God, please help these people and their suffering. I guess this is what we've been fighting for all along. Want to say thanks for letting us make it this far, for letting us do our jobs, for letting us maybe save some of these people. I have to ask though, God, if you could do one more thing. Could you take away the brokenness in Dick's eyes. He's held the men together this long, hell, he's held me together. Don't let him break now. Please. Haven't there been enough sacrifices made in this war already? Don't let Dick become one of the last. Please._


End file.
